This is the goose skeleton we found last month in a field next to the Pheasant Woods. About a half a mile from where we found it are some lochs where geese come from other countries to stay during the winter.

Today I have a new baby brother ! He is called Samuel, and I love him very much. He was born at lunchtime, and after school Grandma and Grandad took me to the hospital to see him. I think he is cute and I am going to be a best friend to him and look after him.

This winter has been very, very snowy and cold. At the start of this month it was so snowy that my village was cut off, and there was no electricity. That means that more birds came to our birdtable to get food, and a lot of the birds were different to the birds that normally come. (I wrote about the birds I usually see here). All the birds I'm writing here were special birds that I hadn't seen before.

This is the roe deer skeleton that I found in January in the wood near Gleneagles. We found the pelvis, one entire leg, some broken ribs, and most of the spine, and we called this skeleton Charlie, because we didn't know whether it was a buck (male) or a doe (female). Normally deer skeletons are easy to work out if you have the skull, because only the male deer have antlers (unless you're a reindeer, but we don't have those in Scotland). But we didn't have Charlie's skull, so we didn't know.

Then two weeks ago I got an email from Debby, an assistant professor from America. Her daughter was about the same age as me and she had found a deer pelvis, and she wanted to know if we knew whether you could tell the difference between male and female deer pelvises. I didn't, and Daddy didn't either but we sent her pictures of the pelvises where we knew whether it was a male or female.

This is a dead buzzard I found in the Pheasant Woods today. Dad and I had been watching a family of roe deer from our favourite watching place, and we found the buzzard a bit further down the valley under some trees.

About me

I'm Jake McGowan-Lowe and I am a bone collector, naturalist, blogger and author as seen on BBC's The One Show, Autumnwatch, Winterwatch, CBBC Wild, Newsround and BBC Breakfast.

I've appeared on the BBC alongside such experts as Sir David Attenborough, Chris Packham, Nick Baker and Ben Garrod. BBC Wildlife Magazine says I'm one of the 50 most influential conservationists in the UK, and The Courier ranked me as the 24th most influential person in 2015.

I am fourteen years old, and I live in a beautiful part of Scotland. I love walking, exploring, watching wildlife and collecting bones. I've been collecting bones since I was six, and I blogged here every week between July 2009 (when I was seven) until February 2016, when I took a break.

You can read more about why I began blogging here, and my advice to other kids wanting to blog here.

Jake's Bones: The book !

Like this blog ? Buy the book ! This blog and my collection led to a book deal for a brilliant childrens' book published by Hachette Children's. It's now been published in the UK, Ireland, the USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands (called Het Grote Bottenboek van Jake) and South Korea.

It was even shortlisted for the prestigious Royal Society 2015 Young Person's Book Prize !

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Me in the news

There have been stories about me in The Times, the Daily Telegraph Magazine, the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday,The Sun, Scotland on Sunday, the Sunday Mail, the Dundee Courier, the Perthshire Advertiser, the Stirling Observer, onBBC Radio Scotland, on the STV news, and I've even been on CBBC Wild, CBBC Newsround, The One Show, BBC Autumnwatchand Winterwatch !